Social

L contacted me off Craigslist on New Year’s Day. I’d run an ad for sex, cocoa, and cuddles. The first and third piqued her interest.. It was the end of the night and I was coming down off being drunk and having fucked an internet stranger just hours prior. L was beautiful in her photos. I knew it was silly to pass her up but all I wanted was to pass out. I told her I was tired but gave her my name and number, saying let’s try another day. I assumed she’d find dick elsewhere and never speak to me again. A few weeks later I heard from her once more.

L’s name was attached to the email so I found her on Facebook. It said she had a boyfriend. At one point they’d been engaged but now were just dating. My moral boundaries are gray and sleazy, easily dropped for fun and cum. If she wasn’t so good looking I could’ve said I won’t do this so as to not hurt her man. But I hadn’t slept with a girl this pretty in ages and didn’t want to miss the chance to do so. I saw her boyfriend lived a thousand miles from Portland and used that to further justify what I was doing. Not that I really cared. I said fuck it and chose to be selfish.

We arranged to meet at her apartment, just a couple miles from where I was living. I was late in getting ready then parked down the street from her place. I sat in a dark car drinking booze, wondering whether I should really do this. I fucked with my hair and hoped to impress her. She could take one look and pass me up. I was nervous but excited. Once the buzz hit I practiced some funny things to say then walked to her apartment. I knocked and in an instant she answered. L stood in the darkened entry and whispered me in. She was tall, toned, and prettier than her photos.

We crept to her room and made way to the bed. We sat apart as her orange cat prowled the books and piles of clothes cluttering the floor. The cat looked like one my grandma had when I was little. This one answered to Sunshine. I told her I was allergic and would have to jam toilet paper up my nose so don’t be creeped if that’s what she sees I’m on her. She laughed at my dumb jokes and traded banter for the next few minutes. I could tell she was smart and was happy to find she was funny. I asked if she’d done something like this but she hadn’t. She spit the question back at me. I declined to tell her I’d fucked someone the first night we spoke. L suggested we watch a movie and that I come sit at her side. I crawled to her corner and put my arm around her. Within moments we were naked.

I asked if she was on birth control as I’d just had a pregnancy scare. In reality it was an abortion but now didn’t seem the time to mention the fetus vacuumed from my ex partner. L had an IUD and we decided to do this unwrapped. I slid myself inside her, forgetting the last topic, the lessons never learned. Her long dirty blonde hair draped over my head like a curtain. It hid us from everything except that moment. I put my mouth to her chest and peered upward. She was radiant. I wanted to pause this moment and have it forever. Even as we went on the feeling never faded. In time I finished on her tummy. She looked for a tissue then wiped it away with her bathrobe. I was half drunk and sweaty, unable to look away as she scraped my cum from her skin. She returned to the bed and I wrapped up in her warmth. My sweaty bangs swept across her back as I kissed her. We lay in embrace, unwinding from the shared experience.

The movie ended and we both agreed we had no idea what it was about. We started another and once more had raw, animalistic sex. Swallowing each other up. She said if she drifted off to just start fucking her. This was a cool lady. We laid for hours but eventually I left despite her asking me to stay. I didn’t want to explain an absence to my roomies. I kissed her goodbye and said it was great. That we had to do this again. Unlike the others I’d fucked from Craigslist I wanted to see her for more than sex. We vibed well. Within a few days we were texting and got together once more.

It became habit to go to her place a couple times a week, always late, always under the guise of sex. L told me the first night’s fuck was fun but the cuddling and talking are what convinced her to see me again. I learned that her sister and sister’s boyfriend lived in the adjacent room. They teased her as they’d heard plenty. I tried to decipher how that jived with her having a long distance boyfriend but couldn’t ask as she didn’t know I knew. Maybe they had an open relationship or some understanding. Maybe the relationship was dissolving and her sister knew it. Maybe not. Probably not. Either way I was enchanted with L and had no intention to stop. I’d met few people in Portland and even less that I connected with. She made me laugh. Made me feel good. Though the pretense to meet was sex, the subtext was comfort, joy, and the bond that came with it. At least that’s how I saw it.

L was down to earth about everything but at the same time guarded with details. She was more open about her past than the present. In time she gave me bits and pieces of her life, avoiding the big obvious that was her boyfriend in California. She’d often say that her life was stressful and complicated. I offered an open ear for whatever she cared to share. There were times when I was close to saying I knew she had a boyfriend. To let it live in the open. I don’t know what all she couldn’t speak about but that had to be a big one. It was a road block in our coming together. We’d already told each other so much. We openly spoke of people in our past that we’d fucked, dated, and lost to time. Old friendships. The stresses of life. She said perhaps I’d noticed that her smile was weird. There was a minor incongruity in her lips, a smirk on one side. She said she used to be beautiful but now disliked her looks. She’d had a tumor in her neck and in the process of removing it a facial nerve was affected. I traced the scar then kissed it. I hoped one day she’d let me shoot a rope of jizz across the incision. Sometimes when we kissed I tasted cigarettes but let it be. It was her body and her choice.

She told me of a military man she’d been engaged to in Florida. She was only 22 and this was the second engagement I knew of. L said the military guy was gay but couldn’t be honest with himself about it. She felt sorry that he had to hide who he was. He’d have her fuck him in the ass with strap-ons. L asked if I’d like the same. I gracefully declined. She also told me why she never let me perform oral sex on her. The first night I tried and she nodded no. I didn’t think much of it but after being rejected other nights she said she didn’t like that. On one of our nights, when we were wrapped up, she told me she was raped at fourteen. The man who did it forced his tongue inside her. There are moments in life where someone steps outside the norm and bares their truth to you. It’s hard to prepare for these things as they come unexpected. Experience doesn’t inform you of what to do. Of how to be there. To know the right things to say in a delicate situation. I did what I could in making her feel safe, saying shit I’m sorry, and hey fuck that awful person. I held her to me and stroked her hair. It’s all I knew to do.

Another factor in her life was her sister’s boyfriend. He wanted to fuck L and when the sister wasn’t around he made it known. He’d ask to shower together and lay in her bed wearing nothing but boxers and his boner. She’d rejected his advances but said things were strained with her sister and if she told on him she’d only be called a liar. I feared she was going to be raped again. As always I did what I could to comfort L. I told her she could stay with me ’til she figured shit out. Any time I pushed on things like that, about offering help or trying to learn what troubled her, she’d go quiet or say no. There was only so much I could do. I wasn’t her boyfriend. Didn’t know where I fit in her life. We were tapping the delicate dance between sex and selves. We knew our bodies liked each other but it was hard to say that the rest of us felt the same.

She was forever busy with school and work so I never got to see her more than once or twice a week. I kept my phone on me and looked forward to the buzz that carried L’s name. She started calling me babe and I liked it. I dropped a babe on her and it was no big deal. It held little meaning yet seemed she used it to signal further intimacy between us. I let myself fantasize and hope we were on our way to becoming something more, maybe a couple. I found myself thinking about her more and more but knew I was swimming in dangerous territory. She had a boyfriend, This could explode at any moment. We weren’t living in reality. It was a fantasy but one I wanted to inhabit. In spite of myself I really liked her.

She started coming over and we’d trade off whose place we’d use. She met one of my roomies. Our dog bit her in the butt. I comforted her when her cat ran away. She told her sister bits about me. I liked the slow integration of each other’s lives that was occurring. I drove her to the airport and she offered to blow me. It seemed that even in neutral territory sex was always a thing between us. But I didn’t want that to be our bond. I liked who she was and the way it felt when we were together. When I’d drop her off I’d always want to say that we should meet outside the bedroom. Grab a drink. Get dinner. But I was afraid to put it out there. Afraid I’d overstep my role and lose her. I’d been involved in my share of casual flings but this felt different. Sex can be just that but it often belies more. This was more. It felt real and that scared me. She had a boyfriend.

The last time I saw her she was in my room as we unwound with talking. L said she had a secret but not to judge. I thought it was going to be the boyfriend revelation. Perhaps they were breaking up. Perhaps we could move forward. This wouldn’t have to be a secret little thing. But that wasn’t it. She used to do porn. Simulated death porn. It was close to the coolest thing anyone had ever told me. When she saw my reaction she was relieved. Someone else dumped her after she told them. I reassured her how cool this was to me. That I only wish I knew sooner. I don’t care what people do with their bodies, who they’ve fucked, what they’ve done. It was a weird story and one I was happy to be trusted with.

When she first came to Portland she worked for a fetish site that crafted custom videos. They catered to men who liked depictions of dead girls and dolls getting fucked. L said that in the films she’d be completely still and unable to blink. I kept laughing as she told me this because these stories were ridiculous. In one video she masturbated with a gun, shot herself in the pussy, then pretended to be dead as some creep fucked her. In another she was a detective hunting down a man who killed women, turned them into dolls, then fucked them. He caught her character and by the end she was part of his collection. I begged to see the videos, the script, anything. It was fucking ludicrous. She promised to try find them for me. By this time she’d told me a lot about her life and this was obviously a secret that stressed her. She was happy that I embraced it and kept laughing. That I wasn’t heaping shame for selling her body. That day she remarked she hadn’t felt so open and comfortable with someone in ages. That she always told me everything. That made me feel great but I knew it wasn’t true. She had worries, stresses, and complications that she couldn’t talk about. She had a boyfriend.

We were to meet again in a few days. We texted as usual and everything seemed normal. I asked about the dog bite on her butt and how it was healing. Promised to give it kisses. The day we were to meet she got busy and canceled. A new day was picked but it passed without word from her. I didn’t want to seem clingy so didn’t text for days, then asked again if she wanted to hang. No response. This was worse than saying we couldn’t be together because she had a boyfriend. This was nothing. She was silent. An apparition. There one moment then gone the next. I missed her and over the next week resisted the temptation to ask her what was up. If something had changed. After two weeks I accepted the inevitable and sent her a goodbye text saying how much I cherished our time and hoped her life got easier. She never responded.

Months rolled on and still I thought of her often. It seemed dumb to be this attached to someone I wasn’t even with. To someone who thought it okay to just disappear. From the time we first spoke to when things ended was under two months. A blip of time. But still that blip spiked high on my life chart. I remembered her saying she liked to dance at a place I went on weekends. I started going almost every Friday hoping to engineer a bumping into her. I’m sure it would’ve been awkward if I had. At the end of the night I’d crawl to the trunk of my car and pass out drunk, feeling her absence after having danced alone. I started to question whether there was ever really anything between us. That maybe the feelings were one sided. Perhaps I was an instrument of distraction. Good sex but little more. Maybe she chose her boyfriend over me. Maybe she met another. I didn’t know. The not knowing drove me crazy and made me sad. In time I moved on but I always held hope she’d reach out.

I didn’t hear from L for over a year. Then one day I did. I was locked up in a San Antonio drug study when I received a text. It was a photo of her in bra and panties. “Hey this is L, I had a cat named Sunshine. Your dog bit my butt and we used to have sexual relations. Want to hang out?” I was confused. Could hardly believe it was her. It was brief, casual, like nothing had happened. It answered no questions. I was in a daze and read the text over and over to ensure this wasn’t a wrong number, a mistake.

I typed and retyped what I’d say, mumbling the words to test if they felt right. I said of course I remembered her. That she looked great. I told her I was in Texas but would be back to Portland soon. She didn’t reply which didn’t surprise me. I knew she was flaky and figured I wouldn’t hear from her again. By this time I’d long lost my investment in the situation. It wasn’t worth the energy or wondering. The nights spent holding my phone and hoping for a buzz from her number. I knew it wasn’t real nor what I wanted it to be. I saw on Facebook that she had a new boyfriend. I’d been down that road before and learned the lesson. Was dealt my punishment for what we’d done. I trashed her number and let it be. But still a small part wondered if one day I’d hear from her again. I decided I wouldn’t mind.